The Idea of Progress eBook

This feeling or attitude was connected with the idea
of Moira. If we were to name any single idea
as generally controlling or pervading Greek thought
from Homer to the Stoics, [Footnote: The Stoics
identified Moira with Pronoia, in accordance with their
theory that the universe is permeated by thought.]
it would perhaps be Moira, for which we have no equivalent.
The common rendering “fate” is misleading.
Moira meant a fixed order in the universe; but as a
fact to which men must bow, it had enough in common
with fatality to demand a philosophy of resignation
and to hinder the creation of an optimistic atmosphere
of hope. It was this order which kept things
in their places, assigned to each its proper sphere
and function, and drew a definite line, for instance,
between men and gods. Human progress towards
perfection—­towards an ideal of omniscience,
or an ideal of happiness, would have been a breaking
down of the bars which divide the human from the divine.
Human nature does not alter; it is fixed by Moira.

5.

We can see now how it was that speculative Greek minds
never hit on the idea of Progress. In the first
place, their limited historical experience did not
easily suggest such a synthesis; and in the second
place, the axioms of their thought, their suspiciousness
of change, their theories of Moira, of degeneration
and cycles, suggested a view of the world which was
the very antithesis of progressive development.
Epicurean, philosophers made indeed what might have
been an important step in the direction of the doctrine
of Progress, by discarding the theory of degeneration,
and recognising that civilisation had been created
by a series of successive improvements achieved by
the effort of man alone. But here they stopped
short. For they had their eyes fixed on the lot
of the individual here and now, and their study of
the history of humanity was strictly subordinate to
this personal interest. The value of their recognition
of human progress in the past is conditioned by the
general tenor and purpose of their theory of life.
It was simply one item in their demonstration that
man owed nothing to supernatural intervention and
had nothing to fear from supernatural powers.
It is however no accident that the school of thought
which struck on a path that might have led to the idea
of Progress was the most uncompromising enemy of superstition
that Greece produced.

It might be thought that the establishment of Roman
rule and order in a large part of the known world,
and the civilising of barbarian peoples, could not
fail to have opened to the imagination of some of
those who reflected on it in the days of Virgil or
of Seneca, a vista into the future. But there
was no change in the conditions of life likely to
suggest a brighter view of human existence. With
the loss of freedom pessimism increased, and the Greek
philosophies of resignation were needed more than
ever. Those whom they could not satisfy turned
their thoughts to new mystical philosophies and religions,
which were little interested in the earthly destinies
of human society.